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Old stone church to get new life as condos in Milford

Judy Rose
Published 9:51 a.m. ET May 27, 2015

Steve Varilone, manager of Bell Tower LLC, stands in the the Bell Tower condominium project in Milford. The former St. Mary’s church that closed in 1967 is being transformed into six units keeping many of the features, including the stone walls and stained glass windows.(Photo: Ryan Garza | Michigan.com)

The massive stone tower where church bells used to ring out across Milford is now a viewing perch over the historic downtown. A frame of 2-inch-by-4-inch studs stretches where the communion rail once ran.

The old Milford church St. Mary Our Lady of the Snows — solid stone and 108 years old — is being converted to six condominiums. They’ll range from 1,280 to 1,515 square feet, priced from $320,000 to $399,000, with the possibility of combining two into 2,550 square feet.

The Gothic church, built from local stones between 1903 and 1907, is part of Milford’s 140-acre historic district. It sits one block from Main Street, full of locally-owned shops and restaurants.

With housing demand on the rise in the region, the developer’s seizing the opportunity to convert the structure into cool living space.

It’s part of a long-standing, nationwide trend of converting old churches and other solidly constructed buildings into condominiums in urban and outer areas. But it also demonstrates today’s increasing demand for residential space inside small, older towns that have walkable downtowns. Tight markets for close-in housing in Royal Oak, Northville and Plymouth are examples of this type of demand.

The squeeze is extreme in Milford, said local building official Randy Sapelak. Milford Village covers 1,550 acres, and of that only 20-25 acres are still available for development. Much of that’s not even zoned residential.

“The property is rapidly disappearing,” he said. “I think it’s getting to the point where people will have to start taking older homes, either knocking them down or adding on to them, similar to Birmingham years ago.”

Local stones and labor

Church history says construction covered several years because parishioners built it on a pay-as-you-go basis. They raised money with bazaars and dinners and trucked in all the stones from local fields with horse-drawn wagons.

“I hope the new owners understand how much local labor and love went into this building,” said preservationist Linda Dagenhardt, who wrote a history of the church.

All possible parts of the iconic church are being preserved, said developer Steve Varilone, who attended religion classes at the church as a child. The stone walls, the vaulted stone arches, the stone-lined basins for holy water at the entrance will all be left as is.

Even the Stations of the Cross — 14 plaques that commemorate scenes from Jesus’ crucifixion — will be left as they are, Varilone said, because they couldn’t be removed without breaking. He’ll cover them if a buyer wants.

Condo owners will share access to the bell tower, he said, a good spot to watch Milford parades and festivals. About half of the original stained glass windows will stay. Some have to be replaced with clear glass for daylight or with a door for code-required egress.

Village activities

This is not the first alternative use for the church since St. Mary parish built a larger one in 1967. Over the last 40 years it has been an Assembly of God church, an office, a fitness center and an entertainment venue.

“It’s great to see a building that old saved and reused,” Sapelak said. “The stone church had sat vacant a long time because it was zoned for offices.”

RE/MAX Classic will handle the sale of the six Bell Tower condominiums in the church, as well as five new townhouses Varilone will build across the street in the church’s parking lot. Called Bell Tower Townhomes, this second project will be two- and three-bedroom townhouses, built in vintage clapboard style with porches and balconies, priced from $435,000 to $519,000.

Varilone is a longtime Milford resident, who’d long wanted to find a use for the church, he said, and made an offer to purchase it about 10 years ago. But he backed away after he decided there was no good commercial use.

Then driving past the church last summer, he had a breakthrough. “It dawned on me that residential use was the best fit,” Varilone said. “It was just a shame that this awesome structure, this iconic structure was sitting vacant.”

The biggest challenge, he said will be cutting needed windows and doors through the stone walls, which are 18 inches thick.

St. Mary Our Lady of the Snow Church has roots in the 1840s, when 10 families arrived from Ireland, fleeing the potato famine, according to historian Dagenhardt.

In the later 1800s, they met upstairs in a general store before building a small frame church, then the all-stone construction. Today the parish has a large contemporary church complex east of town.